Alpine Meadow

17/08/17

Alpine wild flower meadows are a glorious, though fleeting, spectacle of nature. Above the tree line, the growing season is just a few weeks betwen snow melt in July and snow fall in September. I found these broadleaved lupins on the slopes of Mount Rainier and thought they made the perfect foreground to the glacier-clad mountain. The contrast between fragile flowers and harsh ice is offset by the lupins complementing the colour of the sky. In order to balance the flowers and the mountain in the frame, I had to work very close to the lupins with my 16-35mm wide angle lens. Even stopped down to F/22, there was insufficient depth of field to get the whole image sharp. I therefore made three frames with identical compositions and exposures but different points of focus, which I combined using Helicon Focus software to produce a finished image with both lupins and mountain in sharp focus. For more alpine flowers see my Mount Rainier Gallery.